Rochester Opera

Last week the Rochester American Opera Company trouped into the Guild Theatre, Manhattan. At home it performs in Kilbourn Hall (seating capacity, 600), under the supervision of Rochester University. Its personnel is made up of students of music at the University, brought together through a competition for scholarships that pay, in addition to tuition, $50 a week. After four years' study and practice, under the guidance of Conductor Eugene Goossens, one-time conductor at Covent Garden, onetime guest conductor of the

New York Symphony Orchestra, and Producing Director Vladimir Rosing, these students have been permitted to appear as full-fledged professionals before a Manhattan public that included in its audience famed Impresario Gatti-Casazza of the Metropolitan Opera.

The Rochester Company is made possible by George Eastman, famed camera man. To him the idea of opera in English, sung by. U. S. and Canadian musicians, seemed worthy of a huge endowment, by which the Eastman school of music is supported, in association with the University. As a result, young singers are trained, presented in English Grand Opera in a repertory that includes Mozart's Abduction From the Harem, The Marriage of Figaro; Puccini's Madame Butterfly; Gilbert & Sullivan's lolanthe and Pirates of Penzance; and Pagliacci, Cavalleria Rusticana. In Manhattan, the first three were presented. From a financial point of view, the second two did better than the first. On the whole, the venture into professional entertainment met with fair success, enough to establish the practicability of the enterprise, to encourage fur- ther effort of the same nature.

Madame Butterfly, The Marriage of Figaro, are well known. The Abduction From the Harem is not. The story is simple: A Spanish maid kidnaped by pirates and sold to a Turk, almost rescued by her lover, is finally released from the harem through the courtesy of the speakable Turk. The music is Mozartean, was rendered with grace and spontaneity by the cast which excelled as a ombination rather than individually. The im- pression of critics was that the group performed well, that opera in English could be sung intelligibly, that the University of Rochester maintained an advanced school of music.

When they return, after their week in Manhattan, many of these young singers will be heard in the Eastman Theatre. For every Thursday afternoon and evening, it has been provided that the theatre leave off cinema, give over to music. Since the hall is owned by the University, programs can be presented to benefit both audience and performer. Thirty-four hundred people may be seated there. So uncommercial is the theatre that even War-tax is not necessary.

Among many who support the theory of English opera by native singers is Mary Garden of the Chicago Opera. Several months ago, she journeyed to Rochester to sing with the students in a presentation of Carmen. While they used the English libretto, she sang the role in French, "just to do something to indicate her sympathy."